I have written before about the rule of law. I’ve talked a lot about how it seems to be crumbling in the face of corruption at the government’s highest levels. I’m sure at some point I even claimed that there were two different sets of rules in the country. I now believe that is wrong.
I now see that there are many different sets of rules, and apparently they are constantly shifting depending on who one’s employer is, one’s race, ethnicity, religion, ideology, socioeconomic status and so on. I’m sure that many out there would like to paint the nation in black and white terms, but really the nation is shades of gray and that is what is most concerning. The law was meant to be constant, but now our society looks at breaking the law as something everyone does with varying degrees of severity.
The events of the last two weeks illustrate this new dynamic clearly. Hillary Clinton, a rich and privileged white woman with political ties received a pass in her latest investigation despite demonstrating clear intent to obstruct justice by destroying evidence. Police officers in two different states were caught on camera killing suspects for different levels of crime. In response, a disturbed veteran and radical racial extremist in yet another state killed five unrelated white officers and wounded seven more.
It would seem that relations between law enforcement and the nationwide black community are in a downward spiral. As the community acts out against the police due to generations of extra-strict enforcement, police become more suspicious of black people. As police become more suspicious, the community acts out against harsh law enforcement.
Officers have protections when a shooting occurs, and that is important to the carrying out of due process. What is really unfair is that some officers tend to react in a harsher and/or more violent way when policing the black community. Simply being a sex offender, as in the late Alton Sterling’s case in Louisiana, may result in a fatality. Likewise a burnt out tail light and declaring possession of a registered firearm, as in the late Philando Castile’s case in Minnesota, could do the same. Being black in many parts of America means you must play by a different set of rules, one that is more harsh and more strict.
While many Americans who live in the suburbs have little to no daily interaction with police, black communities are the subject of proactive policing, where officers constantly walk beats in the hopes of preventing crimes and catching criminals. Good enforcement is key to cleaning up bad neighborhoods, but some tactics cancel themselves out more than anything.
For example, kneeling on someone’s head, no matter what, will cause them to wriggle and panic simply because it is extremely painful and our instincts in our animal brain tell us that we are about to die. If the animal brain thinks that your neck is about to snap, it doesn’t matter how loudly an officer shouts, “Stop resisting!”
Meanwhile we learned just a few days earlier that the FBI refused to recommend indictment of Hillary Clinton when she and her staff had clearly mishandled classified information, destroyed public information and obstructed justice by destroying evidence after the fact. While law enforcement searched through her selective records, she actively attempted to drop land mines that would undermine the investigation. Her private team sifted through her email account and only presented to the FBI the emails that her team deemed “relevant.”
How is it that in America, one man who is a suspect gets a knee forcing his face into the ground and eventually gets shot for his body reacting the way it should while another person gets to comb through her records, deleting or withholding whatever is damaging?
What happened to the rule of law?
Please understand, the shootings in Dallas are horrifying and are the product of a deranged lunatic. Five men are dead, five families will be forever torn apart and seven others will face a long recovery. It is my belief that there is no “good” in this situation between the black community and the police. The killings of Sterling, Castile and the five individual officers are all tragedies.
But for God’s sake the rules cannot change from situation to situation. Whether it’s the black block mob that attacked protesters with knives and clubs a couple weeks ago at the state capitol or the IRS purposely choosing to be held in contempt of Congress rather than complying with an investigation. The law must be enforced and it must be enforced consistently. Without the rule of law, we become exactly what we left by winning our independence from the British Crown, the rule of men. We become subject to any whim that the men and women we empower have once in office.
Perhaps the real problem is simply the amount of laws. Rather than focusing on protecting the people and their property and maintaining the peace, we have thousands upon thousands of pages of regulation and code that was never approved by Congress or the legislature. If lawmakers cannot be expected to know and approve of all the laws on the books, how can we expect police officers to enforce the law with an even hand?
There is no legislative fix for this situation, only a change in our attitude and a recognition that we need to simplify the law can make a difference. We need to remember that morality cannot be legislated and that legality is not meant to be synonymous with morality.
It comes down to our attitude. Are we OK with crimes going unpunished or targeting of minorities? I’m not, and I hope America is still better than that.

Devon Minnema is a Woodland College Student and syndicated columnnist

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